The “Owner of the Town Ground, Who Overrules All When on the Spot”: Escotchaby of Coweta and the Politics of Personal Networking in Creek Country, 1740–1780

In March 1770 Escotchaby of Coweta put the finishing touches on his plans to assert control over the Indian trade in Florida, capitalizing on the inability of the British Empire to fill the vacuum of power in that territory following the Spanish expulsion after the Seven Years War. Rather than working actively against or antagonistically toward the empire, though, Escotchaby preferred to operate from behind the scenes, employing his relationships with both Europeans and Natives to achieve his ends. In this instance, Escotchaby utilized his kinship, friendship, and partnership with the Indian trader and merchant George Galphin to stake his claim to the Florida trade. Accordingly, Galphin labored secretly on behalf of Escotchaby (as well as himself) by sending a series of letters to the governor of East Florida, James Grant, asking permission to “carry on a trade in East Florida” and unveiling plans to “build a trading house” at St. Marks. Governor Grant responded enthusiastically, for “if it [Galphin’s plan] succeeds, of which I think there is next to a Certainty . . . the greatest part of the Trade of the Lower Creeks must Center there.” But as Galphin pitched his proposal, he let it slip that “the [Creeks] has sent me word Severall times they wood build a house there for me.” While Grant dismissed Galphin’s offhand remark as just another boast of “his influence with the Creeks,” this statement in fact hints at Escotchaby’s intrigues for Florida. For it is no coincidence that one of Galphin’s merchant contacts, John Gordon, learned in confidence from Galphin that he “for sometime past had it in contemplation to settle a Store at the desire of the Indians on their ground” in Florida. If one reads between the lines of Galphin’s correspondence, then, what emerges is a Native-driven initiative, spearheaded by Escotchaby, to shape the onset of imperial power in that region. By deploying his intimate connection to Galphin and setting Galphin up as the primary intermediary for Creek and British peoples in Florida, Escotchaby had for all intents and purposes wrested control and influence away from the empire.¹

In fact, when put into the context of imperial anxiety after the Seven Years War, Escotchaby’s efforts to exert influence over the Florida territories—à la Galphin—become all the more clear. Even before the ink dried on the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Escotchaby ventured to Spanish Havana, where he promised peace with the Spaniards and claimed the “Apalache” area of Florida as his own, already unsettling English plans to colonize and incorporate that region into the empire. And over the next seven years, Escotchaby forced British officials to keep an anxious eye out for any signs of “clandestine correspondence between [Escotchaby] & the Spaniards.” When on several occasions imperial authorities tried to confront Escotchaby about such proceedings related to Florida, Escotchaby simply pleaded ignorance, for “I know nothing certain concerning the Spaniards otherwise I should not keep it a Secret from my Father.” British authorities even convinced Creek leaders like the Pumpkin King to find out “what Talks the Cowetas had brought from the Spaniards,” who later informed imperial agents that Escotchaby intended to grant the Spanish “Liberty to settle upon this Land [Florida].” With panic threatening to paralyze the imperial interest in Florida on account of Escotchaby’s intrigues to Spanish Cuba, Governor James Wright of Georgia time and again “prevail[ed] on them [Creeks of Coweta, specifically Escotchaby] to go to Mr. Galphin.”²

While imperial authorities like Wright knew that Galphin frequently collaborated with the Creeks of Coweta, they failed to understand the depths of the intimacy that existed between them, in particular the personal connection between Escotchaby and Galphin. Because Galphin was married to Escotchaby’s sister, Metawney, Escotchaby intimately associated with Galphin as early as 1741 and over the course of three decades forged a partnership that bound these two “Friends” together. Through their close familiarity with one another, Escotchaby emerged as Galphin’s main contact, informant...